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Throwing my chain - Flexible Chainrings?
Last Post 01/26/2016 10:55 AM by 79 pmooney. 26 Replies.
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Nick A

Posts:625

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01/14/2016 01:15 PM
Campy Super Record (the original), Sedis Sport chain, and five speed Sun Tour Winner freewheel. :-)

I was a junior, so 53-42 up front, and a straight 15-19 in back. I would have to push that bike up hills now!

Nick
longslowdistance

Posts:2881

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01/14/2016 07:14 PM
Stealthy shifting was a useful dark art. We'd hit that right down tube shifter with our right knee for the sneaky upshift prior to making a jump.
Gawd I'm old.
Orange Crush

Posts:4499

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01/14/2016 09:08 PM
I was conviced beyond a reasonable doubt you guys were old many posts ago. You can stop now. But I take it that suggestion falls on deaf ears or is lost in selective amnesia.
79pmooney

Posts:3178

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01/14/2016 10:07 PM
Nick, I raced against David Lamb when he was a junior. Chased him up Smuggler's Notch. I had my 23. He had your cluster!

lsd, I never got to the stealth part. I used to do it out of the saddle climbing walls. Usually alone. And I never felt like a winner on 18% in a 42-13!

OC, did you say something?

Ben
Nick A

Posts:625

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01/15/2016 08:47 AM
I did the Empire State Games qualifying race with those gears. Four 13 mile loops up Lake Welch at Harriman State Park. It was like doing ten thousand squats each four mile climb. But that was what ya did! LOL. I'm so slow now. Shoot, I was slow then, but worked really hard, and was good at staying near the front, but not at the front. :-)

LSD. Never did the knee thing. But certainly, shifting to big ring a little early, and big cross to the second biggest in back. Then you could drop the rear quickly and "GO GO GO". And if you were me, it was for a few minutes of glory before getting reeled in, then trying to not get spit out the back.

"The older I get, the better I was."

N
smokey52

Posts:492

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01/16/2016 08:37 PM
Hey Nick,

In Harriman, was that loop down Tiorati Brook and up Lake Welch or down Lake Welch and up Tiorati?
There's still a race there every Mother's Day. Keith has been up for it. Either way, it's one of my favorite rides, and just a few miles from my house.

smokey
79pmooney

Posts:3178

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01/16/2016 10:51 PM
Nick, I pulled off something like that at the State Championships for the field sprint. (Everything that mattered was up the road.) I had misjudged the course and race badly. Rode a 54-44 x 12-17 thinking that this flat race was going to be fast. It wasn't and I rode almost the entire course on the 44! Came around the last corner and quietly put it on the big-big. I knew the shift up 2 cogs to jump early using the Uniglide chain would be virtually silent. Hung out 2/3s back (tiny field) on the right hand side. There was a breakdown lane big enough to park diagonally in, but with glass so it was shunned. Wind was from the left but because of the glass, nobody looked right. Hadn't all race. With about a mile to go I put it on the 15 and went. Was passing the leader before anyone said anything.

Very small potatoes but a huge deal for me. That was my last season, my last States and first big race after my head injury. My 10th place felt like a win. Grace Jones, our district rep, got to see me pull it off. (She was at our fall awards dinner 6 months before when word went out to all that I was in a coma. She became my biggest fan after the Stated. Upgraded me to a 2 so I could ride the Mt Washington road race as my final race. Watched me get dropped like a rock at 1,2 criteriums that summer, once drafting the national champion TT woman (and clubmate) in one criterium 'till I got caught and had to pull out. That year the Mt Wash. RR was point to point from almost the Mass border north to Conway. Flat and very windy. Field of 40. Only one other rider as high on a bike as me. Never came out of the drops, never straightened my elbows the first 60 miles. Got dropped at 50 miles, stayed out in the middle of the lane so the wheel van with Grace Jones in the front seat couldn't pass me because I knew I was cooked if it did. She watched from that front row seat as I caught the next dropped rider, the two of use eventually getting 3 more and back on. I finished in the field. Another victory.

From the heart, "Thank you, Grace Jones." (If anyone knows if she or her husband are still with us, let me know and I will send this thank you on to her. At one time, Jones Cycle Wear of Lunenburg, MA)

Ben
79pmooney

Posts:3178

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01/16/2016 11:01 PM
I just googled Grace Jones and saw this. http://www.ltolman.org/99arch/00625gracejones.htm Sad. But it re-enforces my memory of her as a racing official/USCF rep who was a real asset to the sport we love. I remember Alan Kingsberry (sp) being hit by a cement truck a year later at the Nationals,; the driver having been given no clue that a bike race was running a stop sign and crossing his path. My thought at the time? Grace would never allow that course.

Ben
Nick A

Posts:625

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01/17/2016 11:09 AM
It was down Tiorati, and up Welch. We trained their sometimes too, and ran it the other way. I was in lower Westchester, so it was a weekend adventure.

This was the early '80's. I got third in the Empire qualifying games, which was the lowest place to qualify. I think the group started out like a dozen, and we dropped them one by one. There were four of us left, and I got the fourth guy in a sprint. By comparison, they had junior Pan Am game qualifiers there that year too with a big group, at least 50, and I got dropped the first time up the climb.

I think of that climb a lot when I go up Tramway here in Albuquerque. Don't quote me, but it's about 6 miles long and I dunno, a couple thousand feet up. Also, like Welch, you can see way up the road too. Sometimes, I just look at my front wheel to try to ignore it. LOL. Long steady climb. All but the slowest pass me, but it's all good.

N
Gonzo Cyclist

Posts:568

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01/26/2016 08:41 AM
it does almost sound like frame flex like Nick A is saying, I had a steel Merckx back in the 80's, after a couple of years of racing on it, it became quite flexy, I could change gears just by tweaking the handlebars and BB at the same time

Check the height of the front D, sound like it may be a bit high? Had that issue on a cross bike once, and it was my front D, it was like maybe 1mm, maybe 2 mm too high?
Cosmic Kid

Posts:4209

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01/26/2016 09:20 AM
Good suggestion there from Gonzo re: the FD...sometimes a small difference can cause big problems.
Just say "NO!" to WCP!!!!
79pmooney

Posts:3178

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01/26/2016 10:55 AM
I set my front derailleurs so I can just see between the top of the teeth and the outer cage as it passes over the chainring on the upshift.

Ben
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